Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is putting the final touches on Windows 7, and by all accounts it will be Microsoft's best operating system product in nearly a decade when it's released. But that's not the only cash cow the software giant has -- its Office franchise is hugely profitable as well. Could that piece of its business ever be in jeopardy, though?The OpenOffice.org full software productivity suite is, in an odd way, Microsoft Office's largest competitor. Largest in that it's unknown in almost every corporate circle I've seen, and significant in that it provides -- for free -- almost everything the costly Microsoft Office does.
It's amazing more cost-conscious IT heads don't consider OpenOffice when cost cuts are the order of the day. Sure, Microsoft Office is the standard in business for just about everything from spreadsheets to newsletters. But if you could use an Excel-like product with near 100% compatibility and no cost at all, would you?
Outside of the Excel freaks who need every possible spreadsheet feature, OpenOffice -- at some point -- could openly threaten Microsoft's home and small business marketing for Microsoft Office. The real problem with open-source software like OpenOffice is marketing finesse (as in, there is none).
The future threat to a sizable portion of Microsoft Office's cash stream could crimp the software company's cash flow beyond the worst Q3 profit drop it just had (a first, I might add). Although Windows 7 is on the verge of being released, Microsoft's Office positioning could weaken if OpenOffice -- currently at 50 million downloads and counting -- gains more steam.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-29-2009 @ 11:11AM
TX CHL Instructor said...
I currently use both MSOffice and OpenOffice. I use MSOffice mainly because it came with the package back when I got one of my current systems. However, about the only feature it has that I have not (yet) figured out how to make OO print envelopes on my printer as quickly and easily as MSWord does. For all of my other systems, I use OO (on my iMac, I use NeoOffice, which is a little better integrated than OO).